


Round Two

by recrudescence



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Incest, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:47:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's sick now and it's even sicker how much she depends on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Round Two

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to the Porn Battle prompt: transformation.

He’s taking no chances. Promiscuity is a potential side effect of several drugs and he has no way of knowing how hard or softly that might hit her. And although he’s almost a hundred perfect sure no one onboard would take advantage of his sister, he can’t help thinking of worst-case scenarios—River sneaking off Serenity, going behind his back for sheer spite, getting into more trouble than they can afford. Simon tips the proper dosage into her hand and watches as she swallows. Having her pregnant on top of everything else isn’t going to happen.

Besides, he’s learned by now.

He loves her, of course, always has. But he can remember back to days when his sister was a bright-eyed spitfire, a beam of pure curiosity wrapped in a plain private-school uniform.

She’s sick now and it’s even sicker how much she depends on him. How much that sends his brain plunging down the filthiest paths it can find.

Her mind mangled, senses jumbled, taking everything to heart because it’s the way she’s _built_. The way they _made_ her.

He could, if he chose, turn his caretaker role into another. Could soothe and convince her with more than medicine. Calm her with kisses. Press a fingertip up between her legs, coax her warm and bare and breathy, ease himself inside her and make her forget anything in the world but him. It isn’t wrong, he can already hear himself justifying: it works, makes her better, shows she trusts him, and she isn’t in her right mind but she’s giving consent. And she would.

He can’t do that to her now.

\--

Before. The two of them, too smart for their own good, knowing too much of book-learning and not enough of the world.

Noticing how pretty she was becoming, flushing and denying it to himself. He was a teenager, she knew his weaknesses and loved making him ill at ease, riling him up in her own infuriating way. No other boys could compare to her beautiful brother; she’d said so once, teasingly. Her beautiful brother who comforted her when she came home and started crying after studying with Draciu Jiang, scornfully explaining how he’d tried to kiss her over and over and that it had been horrible. That it wasn’t supposed to be that way.

Thirteen years old. She’d always made fun of the girls he liked.

Tear-streaked and curious and half-curled in his lap, and he’d held her and kissed the salty tracks from her cheeks. A prodigy, she was old enough to understand the biology, not old enough to understand the implications of it. Stroking the curve of her spine, letting her squirm as close as possible. Letting her have all the answers he could give. Resting his hand there, where she was yielding and heat-drenched; that mouth parting, two pink brushstrokes soft and gasping against his cheek. Naked skin and naked wonder, laughing and learning.

His beautiful sister. Another secret to keep.

Anatomy pages brought to life; compare and contrast. River’s nipples hard against his hands, River’s legs clenched around his waist, River writhing and whining in his arms. Slipping into each others’ rooms to play or study and no one the wiser. How it was supposed to be.

River didn’t understand. Osiris was overpopulated, she argued, and procreation shouldn’t be a primary objective to begin with. Social mores were societal anomalies half the time, consensual intercourse that harmed no one was all that should matter. Completely rational. Surely their parents would understand. All Simon needed to do was explain why he didn’t want to get married.

It ended with her calling him a chicken and taking matters into her own hands.

Backpedaling failed utterly. “We were playing a game,” she had insisted, and Simon hadn’t been able to say anything at all.

The next thing he knew, his sister was swiftly and discreetly shipped off to school—a highly rigorous program suitable for her needs, that was what his parents said—and he wasn’t able to see her for over a year.

“One of your games,” their mother said archly, when Simon insisted River’s letters were encoded, and his entire body had burned with shame and indignation.

\--

“_Games_.” His sister smiles up at him, the utterance hanging in the air with all the poignancy of a baby saying its first word.

Simon forces a smile back.


End file.
